Rights groups: Ban solitary confinement of youths

NEW YORK (AP) — State governments should abolish the use of solitary confinement for offenders under 18, whether as a punitive or protective measure, two of America's leading advocates for prisoners' rights said in report Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said brief periods of isolation may be needed as a security measure. However, they contend that longer spans of solitary confinement can cause serious psychological and physical harm to young people, including heightened risk of suicide.

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Solitary confinement of adults also can be harmful, the report said. "But the potential damage to young people, who do not have the maturity of an adult and are at a particularly vulnerable, formative stage of life, is much greater."

The report, "Growing Up Locked Down," said lack of detailed state data made it impossible to estimate the number of juveniles subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of isolation at any given time. But it described the practice as widespread, notably among juveniles held in adult facilities.

The report cited psychiatric studies and medical experts warning of the risks that solitary confinement could pose to juveniles. It included input from 49 people who spent time in jails or prisons as minors and described spending at least a month in solitary before turning 18.

"The only thing left to do is go crazy — just sit and talk to the walls," a youth confined in Florida was quoted as saying. "Screaming, throwing stuff around — I feel like I am alone, like no one cares about me. Sometimes I feel like, why am I even living?"

The report's author, human rights researcher Ian Kysel, acknowledged that young people can present serious challenges for corrections officials — both as potential rule-breakers and as potential victims of older inmates.

"Officials may need to use limited periods of segregation and isolation to protect young people from other inmates or even from themselves," he said. "But the extremely stark conditions of solitary confinement that we found across the country, isolation for 22-24 hours a day, often for weeks or months, harm young people in ways that are different than if they were adults."

His report says youths shouldn't be serving time in adult jails and prisons, and instead should be at juvenile facilities where staff trained to deal with young people could find alternative ways to address disciplinary and security problems.

"Punitive schemes can be reorganized to stress immediate and proportionate interventions and to strictly limit and regulate any short-term isolation as a rare exception," the report says.

For now, however, many state and local corrections agencies do house some juveniles in adult facilities, and options for dealing with problems may be limited by lack of space and resources.

Daron Hall, president of the American Correctional Association, is also county sheriff in Nashville, Tenn., and oversees a 4,000-bed jail system that only has 20 beds set aside for juveniles.

"When you have fights, you're limited in your ability to separate people without putting them in what you'd call isolation," he said. "You can't move them into adult unit, so you start running out of options."